August 4, 2004

Researchers are exploring several ways to imitate biology at the submicrometer level.

One approach tries to inorganically duplicate biological materials that have extraordinary properties, such as those of geckos, which can cling even to smooth surfaces when upside down because of capillary and van der Waals forces between the surface and densely packed 200-nm-wide keratin hairs on the soles of their feet.

August 4, 2004

R&D projects based on such techniques as carbon nanotubes, molecular electronics and atomic force microscope probe arrays appear to be converging on the ideal of a universal high-density, high-capacity, nonvolatile, low-power read/write memory technology.

August 4, 2004

Neurotoxins called BMAA from blue-green algae present in certain foods or water can accumulate in proteins and might cause brain diseases like Alzheimer’s after many years, suggests a new study.

BMAA is sometimes incorporated into proteins in place of normal amino acids.It would slowly be released as proteins are broken down. So for years after eating contaminated food, people’s brains would be exposed to low levels of the neurotoxin.

August 2, 2004

We could be alone in the Universe after all. Martin Beer of the University of Leicester, UK, and co-workers argue that our Solar System may be highly unusual, compared with the planetary systems of other stars.

They suggest that other planets (which are detected from the wobble that they induce in their own sun’s motion) were not formed by the same kind of process that produced our Solar System… read more

August 2, 2004

You can see why Google was a natural to put it all together. Google already searched the entire Web. Google already had a distributed framework with thousands of independent machines. Google already looked for the links between pages, the way they fit together, in order to build its index. Google’s search engine solved equations with millions of variables. Semantic Web content, in RDF, was just another search problem, another set… read more

July 30, 2004

Research teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and from Kyoto University have succeeded in making practical photonic crystal chips.

The techniques could be used to make smaller, more efficient communications devices; create optical memory and quantum computing and communications devices; develop new types of lasers and biological and chemical sensors; and could ultimately lead to all-optical computer processors.

July 30, 2004

Researchers from the National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC) in Ireland have used electric fields to direct arrays of gallium arsenide light-emitting diodes to assemble onto silicon chips.

The researchers’ self-assembly device contains an array of electrodes on a silicon surface that allows them to put electric fields of specific configurations on the surface of the chip. The fields can be configured to attract electric charges at a particular spot… read more

July 30, 2004

Princeton University researchers have shown that photocurable nanoimprint lithography (P-NIL) can produce lines of polymer resist just 7 nm wide with a pitch (or pattern repeat) of only 14 nm. The technique also produced reliable results over the whole area of a 4 inch wafer.

“This work really pushes the limit down to a few molecules in size,” said Stephen Chou of Princeton.

July 30, 2004

Cars that report your every false move to local law authorities. Huge databases with detailed information on every citizen. Companies that only honor privacy guidelines when it’s profitable for them to do so.

These were some of the winners of Privacy International’s sixth annual U.K. Big Brother Awards.